Leadership Conferences are an Opportunity to Build Stronger Teams

It has been a very active summer and I have traveled across the country working with individuals and teams as organizations continue to change and move into new organizational models requiring a new outlook about the importance of teams and alignment.

Have you noticed that it is not “business as usual”? I think we thought the upheaval would end and we would get back to the way it used to be. I think the good news is we have an opportunity move forward to do even better at producing our desired results and at creating leadership for aligned completion and growth.

One opportunity to create a change in outlook and effective relationships is during a full leadership conference which most organizations have to share best practices and to announce and implement new initiatives. Often organizations have yearly and/or quarterly meetings to bring leaders and emerging leaders together to present strategic plans with speakers both within and outside of the organization. Recently I was engaged to assist a particular Leadership Conference in expanding their conference model to include on the spot discussion, bridging into implementation and the creation of team action plans for a national organization. 

To accomplish this we:

  • Creating learning teams for the conference that remained the same throughout. The teams created an opportunity for people to meet who were from different areas, though at the same level of leadership.
  • Part of the conference pre-activity was to pick facilitators for the learning teams who were trained via webinar and a pre-meeting to enhance participation and the sharing of ideas.
  • After each keynote address the groups met, answered specific questions that we prepared about what they received from the presentation and how they could use the relevant concepts for implementation in their workplace.
  • Discussion took place as well as commitment to an action to be taken following the conference.

Each group also had an opportunity to meet with their ongoing team members outside of the conference team meetings to compare notes and agree on the next steps toward their particular action plan. Therefore when teams returned home they had already begun the work of moving ideas into action.

Results:

1. Planning activity on the spot

2. Focused communication opportunities

3. Empowerment as leaders

4. Bridging to real time

In this new business climate, the activities included in yearly strategic meetings, quarterly progress meetings, monthly department meetings, and weekly team meetings need to be upgraded for empowerment and aligned action. Please visit the rest of our website to learn more about how we can help you enhance the meeting opportunities you have today to build stronger teams.